Merchant terminals, utilized to process consumer transactions such as credit card transactions, are ubiquitous worldwide. Referring to FIG. 1, in the case of credit card transactions, processors functioning as agents for acquiring banks, or independent sales organizations, often lie (30) in the stream of commerce interposed between merchant terminals (20), issuing banks (50), and credit card companies (40, 42, 44). The interaction (60) between merchants and processors is not without risk for the processors, due in part to contractual and regulatory complexities that relate to the processing of credit card transactions. Referring to FIG. 2, some aspects of such risks for processors are illustrated. When a merchant engages (70) in a credit card transaction with a customer, there is a chance that issues such as fraud, mistake, bad business practices, and/or failure of the goods/services may result in what is known as a “chargeback” by an issuing bank, whereby a credit transaction acquirer may be debited for the amount of the chargeback by a credit card company. In such a situation, the acquirer, independent sales organization, and more typically, a processing agent or “processor” who has contractually taken on such obligations, then has the task of recovering the funds from the merchant, or from “merchant specific reserves” maintained by the acquirer or processor for such purposes. Thus such a processor would be taking on a chargeback liability (72). If the merchant remains in business (74), it can be pursued to compensate the processor and/or acquirer for this chargeback liability, generally through use of a contractually predetermined process (76). If the merchant does not remain in business, a condition which may be termed “merchant death”, the processor and/or acquirer may pursue (78) utilizing any merchant specific reserves to cover the chargeback liability. In the event that such reserves are indeed adequate and contractually available to cover the chargeback liability, the processor and/or acquirer generally will utilize them (84). In the event that the merchant specific reserves are not adequate to cover the chargeback liability, such liability flows to or remains with (80) the processor, independent sales organization (ISO), or acquiring bank, and most conventionally, by contract to the processor. As is illustrated in FIG. 2, given such a paradigm of risk management between merchants, acquiring banks, ISOs, processors, issuing banks, and credit card associations, there is a need for processors to have improved ability to both manage the reserve terms pertinent to merchants for most equitably matching the risks placed upon processors (86), and also to mitigate downstream risks of having to fund uncovered chargeback liabilities from the operating profits of the processor (82).